Marketing feels harder because the constraint moved. It used to be “can we produce enough?” Now it’s “can we earn a few minutes of real attention from the right people?” When information explodes and time doesn’t, attention becomes the bottleneck. That’s not philosophy. It’s a budget problem. Supply goes up, time stays fixed, and the… Continue reading Marketing Attention Is the Scarce Resource (And That Changes Everything)
Author: triggsmt67
Marketing Tactics Business Owners Can Safely Ignore in 2026
Marketing attention is the scarce resource in 2026 Most small businesses aren’t under-marketing. They’re over-touching everything: a little SEO, a little social, a little email, a little “AI,” a little print, a little whatever their competitor posted this week. It looks like activity. It’s mostly noise. Here’s a useful filter for 2026: if a tactic… Continue reading Marketing Tactics Business Owners Can Safely Ignore in 2026
AI Search Visibility: Why Local Businesses Are Disappearing
If you’ve driven Highway 12 toward Lolo Pass in January, you know the moment. The sky and the road turn the same color. Trees blur. Mileposts vanish. When that happens, you stop looking for options. You look for one thing: a signal you trust. Search is moving in that direction. Over the last two decades,… Continue reading AI Search Visibility: Why Local Businesses Are Disappearing
Why Digital Marketing Fails Early
Why Digital Marketing Fails Early A few weeks back, I was walking through campaign data with a Montana-based client. Local service business. Solid offer. Decent spend. Their Facebook ads had stalled, and they were convinced something changed behind the scenes. “The algorithm’s just not showing our stuff,” they said. But the problem wasn’t the platform.… Continue reading Why Digital Marketing Fails Early
The Digital Inversion: Why Your Business is Vanishing from AI Search
What is AI Search Visibility? AI Search Visibility is the measure of how effectively Generative Engines (like ChatGPT, Google SGE, and Perplexity) can parse, understand, and recommend your business data to a user. Unlike traditional SEO which ranks links, AI Visibility ranks answers based on the structured confidence of your digital footprint. The Missoula Fog Effect If you’ve… Continue reading The Digital Inversion: Why Your Business is Vanishing from AI Search
Clear marketing decisions for Montana business owners
Clear marketing decisions for Montana business owners Walking across the Higgins Avenue Bridge on a winter morning, you’ve seen the fog thick enough to hide the Clark Fork below. You know the water is moving. You can hear it. You just can’t see where it’s going. That’s how most Montana business owners feel when they… Continue reading Clear marketing decisions for Montana business owners
How Apple Business Connect Turns Local Searches Into Customers—If You Move Fast Enough
On a sleepy stretch of Main Street in a mid-sized town—the kind with one genuinely good coffee shop and a hardware store that still cuts keys—there’s a little bakery called Juniper & Rye. It’s not much to look at from the outside. The sign’s faded. The front window is usually fogged over. If you walked… Continue reading How Apple Business Connect Turns Local Searches Into Customers—If You Move Fast Enough
What AI Can’t Replace: The Surprising Value of Experience
The fear was real. The conclusion was wrong. Seeing AI produce work that looks like yours—fast and effortless—is genuinely unsettling. Anyone who says it didn’t rattle them either wasn’t paying attention or hasn’t been honest with themselves. That reaction isn’t weakness. It’s human. But the leap most people make—“I’m replaceable”—is the wrong takeaway. That’s not… Continue reading What AI Can’t Replace: The Surprising Value of Experience